Which Online Finance Tools Do You Use?

Every month it seems there’s a new personal finance website offering something unique, from budgeting to paying off debt to improving your credit score to boosting your saving habits. We don’t endorse specific sites but I wanted to see a roundup of some recent broad reviews from sources that are, to the best of my knowledge, independent. Here are three:

For those sites that provide retirement planning tools, a key question for many public sector employees is: how well do they take into account your defined benefit pension, including the amount you and your employer contribute and the expected future income?

Also, keep in mind that:

there may be fees associated with using the sites; and

to get the full benefits, you enter a lot of personal information, including usernames and passwords from all your financial accounts. This means you should pay special attention to online security. The U.S. government has a good resource at onguardonline.gov. A lot of the tips are common sense, but think of them as healthy reminders.

1 Comment:

March 12, 2011 - vivian

I use every calculator I can find. Many sites fall short. They don't allow you to show that you are working in retirement. They assume interest rates that are too good to be true in today's financial climate. AARP has recently made changes that give a better picture. Fidelity.com has a good planner but you have to sign in to use it. ( I can use it because I have investments with them) Some sites I will not use because they ask too much personal information. http://www.ssa.gov has a good calculator for estimating your social security income, it also allows you to create 3 what if scenarios but still falls short if you plan to retire young because it assumes you will take social security at 62 instead of 66. Be wary of any site that asks for too much personal information. Use as many sites as you are comfortable with to get the best picture of your retirement goals. Most sites are good about retirement savings, hardly any are good at retirement spending. I read both Money magazine and Kiplingers and they often name sites in articles. Some I have not used due to the personal information requirements. Try as many as you can just BE CAREFUL what you disclose online.